I woke up to the sounds of birds chirping and an annoying reminder that I had to get ready for school manifested in the form of my twin sister banging on my door and yelling at me to get my ass out of bed. I sat up and yawned, then fell right back down and closed my eyes. “Go away, Laurie!” I shouted through the door. It didn’t take long for her to open the door and stand there, cross armed, with a glare on her face. “Go away,” I said more calmly.

“Dad’s been trying to get you up for ten minutes now, the bus is gonna be here any second!”

I covered my head with a pillow. “I went to school yesterday, why wasn’t that good enough?”

I heard her walk over to something in my room, pick it up, and then drop it on me. I found out seconds later that it was my bookbag. “Get up and get dressed. Like four minutes to bus.”

I let the bookbag hit the floor and pulled myself out of bed. I was still tired, but it was the hangover from last night’s drinking that was killing me. Four of us - Grant, Charlie, Wheeler and me - had gone out to the local bar after the shitty game we had. Luckily, the owner and dad were good friends, so he let us in and served us no questions asked. He also must have paid attention to the game, because he knew exactly what we were there for.

I had taken a shower before I went to bed, so I didn’t feel as though I needed one now. I quickly pulled my underwear on, my jeans, my shirt, my shoes, that stupid necklace I got sometime last week when we went shopping at the mall. I told Chrissie and Kathy that I didn’t need that, why hadn’t they listened?

Thanks to the haze my mind was in thanks to the alcohol, I didn’t even consider questioning why I would have bought a little heart pendant necklace on a small chain, gone shopping with Laurie’s friends, or acted like it was the most natural thing in the world. In fact, I wasn’t even sure if I thought anything in that moment.

I slung my bag over my shoulder and walked downstairs to wait for the bus with Laurie. Dad didn’t even look up from his paper, he just told us to have a good day. He was still looking for a job after he got fired from the plant just after Mom died. Lucky us, his unemployment checks were just barely keeping us from getting kicked out on the street.

I got on the bus and took my usual seat. Grant was already busy doodling away in his sketchbook, getting ready for our big webcomic debut. I had to admit, doing a TG comic wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it wasn’t too difficult to get into it once I did. The first character I’d dreamed up for it was the MC’s boyfriend, pre-and-post transformation. Making the character into guys before the change was my idea, since it seemed like an interesting one.

Grant was getting the design for the MC down, now. I’d just made him/her up the night before, while we were drunk. The pre transformation version looked a little too skinny for my liking, though. “Bulk him up a little,” I said, “he’s gay, but he's not scrawny.”

“He’s gotta look notably different because of the change.”

“The tits aren’t gonna be enough?”

“I don’t want him to look like androgynous, I want him to look like the kind of guy a jock would pick on.”

It would be a way to promote sympathy, I guess. Plus, Grant and I had suffered our own fair share of bullying from jocks back in middle school because we’d been best friends since kindergarten and because I was sorta scrawny. The bullying had been a part of the reason I’d joined the football team as soon as my freshman year started.

“Look, he’s gonna be hot when he changes, look.” He flipped a couple pages to where he’d started the designs for the girls. There she was, the MC, one Brenda Insert Last Name Here. (I hadn’t decided on last names for anybody yet.) I’d asked him to sorta base her on Laurie, so she was about five foot three, ninety pounds, with a decent pair on her. Long, wavy blonde hair and cheeks dotted with freckles. I figured since it was Laurie’s idea that the two of us actually pool our skills and do a webcomic, we’d dedicate something to her, so I asked Grant to base Brenda on her.

On the one hand, it was a little weird that he was calling my sister hot, and that I agreed with him. On the other hand, Brenda wasn’t really Laurie, so I could actually agree with no shame.

“So don’t worry about how scrawny he looks as a dude.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. You get those scripts I emailed you last night?”

He nodded. “Yep. First chapter’s pages are already done, all the way to the break up.”

That was impressive. I’d mailed him seventeen pages of script and all while we were both shitface drunk. I was starting to think I was the most drunk the night before. I was already wondering what Joey and Allana, Brian/Brenda’s best friends, would look like.

I caught Grant looking at my necklace for some reason. “What?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nothing. Just, I drew Brenda wearing a necklace looked like that. How long have you had one?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Last week, sometime.”

Something about that felt confusing, but I ignored it. I tucked the necklace under my shirt and got back to brainstorming chapter two of our comic.

Later…

“How can Ash ‘The Flash’ Johnson show his face in our school after losing that game last night?” Kathy Myers, Laurie’s best friend and editor of the school paper, asked me when I got to my locker. “Also, that ‘School Life’ story you're writing is late for today's edition, you got it ready for tomorrow?”

I pulled a half dozen sheets of paper out of notebook. “Here ya go.”

She thumbed through them. “Good. Y’know, when Laurie asked me to let you join the paper, I thought it was stupid to let a jock on board. You’ve actually been an awesome journalist, Ash.”

I laughed. “Yeah, because I’m not a jock.” I dumped my textbook for physics into my bag. “Be wary of the last couple pages, though. I was drunk last night.”

She nodded. “I know. Laurie called and told me you and your buddies were peeing on the football field.”

I just barely remembered that, which was better than not remembering. At least I could brush it off in a “So what?” manner.

“Hey, you're wearing that necklace,” she said. I looked down and realized that it was visible again. I wondered when I’d pulled it out. “I was there with you when you bought that, wasn’t I?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

I shrugged. “I dunno. Weird day?”

She continued to look at the necklace, then turned away. “Either way, it’s a pretty necklace. I told you that then, right?”

“You probably did. And you’re right, it is.”

“Yeah. Anyway, don’t forget to tell Grant that his strip for Friday’s paper needs to be in by the end of school today.”

I nodded again. “No problem, Kat,” I said, not even realizing that I used Laurie’s nickname for Kathy. A nickname only Laurie used for her, because Kathy wouldn’t let anybody else use it. She’d kicked me in the gut the last time I’d tried to use it, despite the fact that I’d known her almost as long as I’d known Grant.

She did nothing this time.

Later…

“Remember, last night was a disgrace,” Coach Brandt said, pacing in front of us like some kind of drill sergeant. “It was a disgrace, but it was not your fault. That fake-out play they pulled woulda fucked up anyone. They preyed on what your natural response would have been to that play, because they knew what their natural response would have been. They played us like goddamn fiddles and laughed at us while they walked out with a win that we trained for, that we earned!

“And the worst part is that every one of our other rivals out there will know how to play us because they saw that game. They saw what beat us. And now all those cocksucking wannabes will be ready to do the same thing, or to change it up so that it’ll beat us again. Well, we’re gonna put a stop to that, starting today!

“I’ve had Wheeler draw up some modified plays,” he said, taking the playbook from Wheeler, who was still wearing a wrapping around his leg after that fall he’d taken during the game. “These plays will be our counter moves to anything they can come up with to beat us. Starting today, we take back our wins from anyone who tries to cross us on that field!”

Everybody seemed pumped, but at the same time, we all knew that it was just Coach’s way. He had been a marine during the Gulf War, so he’d probably had a badass drill sergeant, and he carried that onto the field with him now that he was just a simple football coach and history teacher. I was hoping to get into the history teaching thing, myself, when I got out to college. History and writing were my two favorite subjects here, so I figured I’d take them further after high school.

That made me think about the webcomic. As soon as I got home, I would need to get coloring done, then I’d have to email them back to Grant so that he could get them up onto the URL we were paying for. Four days from now, we hoped to actually break into the webcomic business and start getting money put back for college.

“Johnson!” Coach shouted, moving in front of me.

“Yeah, Coach?”

“I’m keeping you out today.”

“What the hell, Coach?”

He put his hand on my shoulder. “Hold on, hold on, I’ve got a reason. You and Wheeler are both out today, you’re gonna work on studying last night’s game to see where exactly we went wrong and they got the drop on us. You two took the most hits last night, and Wheeler got his leg all cut up, so I figure you two were the most on point.”

I sighed. “Okay.”

“Good.” He grabbed my necklace and stuffed it down my shirt. “I told you about that before, no flashy shit on my field.”

“Yeah, Coach…” I said, my voice growing weak as I did. I coulda swore I took the necklace off when I got changed. In fact, I swore I hung it on that hook on the back of my locker door, just above that mirror I have in there. I definitely didn’t remember putting it back on after I got into my gear.

Something seemed off.

Later..

“There!” Wheeler said, pointing to the screen as he hit the pause button. I leaned in and tried to see what he was seeing. I didn’t like watching football as much as I did playing it. Playing football, somehow everything seemed easy to follow, it was all somehow laid out in a linear path. Watching it looked like a shitton of ants rushing to one spot, then to another, then to another.

I could easily tell which one of the ants on the screen was me. This was the final quarter, when they’d knocked Wheeler into the benches on the side and pulled their miracle play. I was the one with the ball, and I threw it for Pete Simons to catch, since he was closest to the goal. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, it looked like it should have been a routine play.

Then I saw it. The guy in front of me was doing a cheap fake-out, bouncing left and right in front of me in an attempt to make me confused and throw the ball his way. I’d seen through that pretty easy, though, so that hadn’t stopped me. It was Pete. While I was getting faked over on our side of the field, one of their guys was doing the same to Pete over by the goal. When the ball came sailing over to him, Pete went to his right to grab it when he should have gone to the left, and their guy was able to nab it the air and pass it off to one of their guys by the goal.

I sat back in my chair. “Those fuckers got Pete faked.”

Wheeler nodded. “And their guys knew when to expect the ball.”

“What the hell? Do they watch us practice?”

He shook his head. “I dunno, man. They had us down, though. Knew exactly what plays we’d pull.”

I took a drink of the soda I’d taken from Coach’s fridge. He didn’t mind, always offered one to the whole team every day after practice. The whole thing was putting me on edge. High school football can be everything to some people, even if it was just a fun game to people like me. The knuckleheads on North Ridge’s team were more the former, and wore it like a badge of honor that they’d not only won, they’d beat us, the Southside Roadwarriors.

“I’mma go tell Coach,” I said, standing up from my chair.

“I’ll keep looking through everything,” Wheeler said. He then turned to me and added, “Don’t forget your necklace, man.” He held it between his fingers.

“I don’t even remember taking this off.”

“It was probably getting to you. I swear I haven’t seen you take it off since you bought it.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

I got the feeling that wasn’t it, but I put it out of my mind. I dropped the empty soda can in the waste basket next to Coach’s office door and jogged out to the field.

He was standing on the bleachers, shouting out orders and plays. Everybody seemed to be doing pretty well. I tried to pick out Grant or Charlie in the mass of people, but I couldn’t. Yet another problem with looking at football from outside the game. “Get your panties up and run, ladies!” Much as Coach was awesome, I did wonder how some of the things he said to us on the field didn’t get him fired. “Johnson, whaddya got?” I didn’t even notice he’d seen me.

“Pulled a fake-out on Pete when I was throwing him the ball in the fourth quarter, just after the play that knocked Wheeler out.”

He groaned. “Smart sumbitches, have us lookin’ at you when we shoulda been lookin’ at Pete. Get Wheeler drawing up some plays to get around that.”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“Good job, Johnson. You may just be the best quarterback I’ve trained at this school. You could go to the pros.”

I smiled. “Thanks, Coach.”

Later…

I dropped my bookbag on the floor beside my desk and turned my laptop on. The pages I needed to color were in my Dropbox, just like Grant said they’d be. I downloaded them to my desktop and opened up PhotoShop and got to work. It wasn’t easy, since Grant had used some pretty heavy shading on some pages. It made me wonder if we shouldn’t just do it in black and white, but then I shoved that idea out of my mind. Black and white webcomics were a dime a dozen, color would actually help us get some interest.

Laurie walked it at some point and hugged me from behind. “What’s goin’ on?” she asked.

“Just getting the color done.”

She pointed to Brian on the page I was working on. “What the hell is he so skinny for?”

“I said the same thing, but Grant said it would better this way.”

“Uh, nobody in high schools these days is that skinny.”

“I know. Gotta admit, though, he works well like that now that I see him with other characters.”

She pointed to Maya, Brian’s best friend. “Who’s the big titted hooch?”

“Maya, Brian’s childhood friend.”

“Why is she wearing a miniskirt and fuck-me heels?”

I shrugged. “Blame Grant, he drew her. I just described her as ‘Brian’s childhood friend’.”

“Please dump her after a few chapters. As your sister and the basis for your main character’s female form, I ask this one and only thing.”

I smiled. “And take away Brenda’s only female role model?”

“Introduce another one that doesn’t look like a stripper. Or at least clean her up.”

“I’ll talk to Grant. Maybe what she’s wearing can get turned into a plot point later on.”

“I will accept that and appreciate you as the best twin brother I have.” She let go of me and walked over to the doorway.

“I’m your only twin brother!” I shouted after her.

“Hence best! Oh, I forgot, nice necklace!”

I had forgotten about that completely. “Hey, Laurie, c’mere!” She walked back into the room. “Didn’t you buy this last week?”

She scratched at her chin for a moment. “Nah, I don’t think so. I wouldn’t wear something that flashy anyway.” She reached for my doorknob to shut the door. “That is much more your style. It’s just pretty, that’s all.” And with that, the door was shut and she was gone.

I sighed. Had I bought the necklace? And was it really my “style”? I seemed to remember buying it, and that I’d liked it, but at the same time, something just seemed off. Like why I would have gone to the mall with Laurie’s friends or bought jewelry. Maybe I really had, maybe I was just going nuts.

I finished up the coloring on most of the first chapter’s pages, then put my laptop to sleep. I needed a nap for some reason, probably relating to what little practice I got to put in after Wheeler and I finished up our investigation of the game. That and walking home. The school really needed a bus driver who’d work in the evening and ferry sports kids home.

I took off my necklace and hung it on the small desk mannequin on the corner of my dresser. My brain shut itself off as I did, otherwise I would have questioned its existence and why there appeared to be six other necklaces hanging on it.

I pulled off my shirt and pants and tossed them in the laundry hamper in the corner by my closet. I let myself fall onto the bed and slipped into sleep within moments.